The present disclosure relates to a drive unit using a polymer actuator device, a lens module as well as an image pickup unit including such a drive unit, an ion exchange resin suitable for such a polymer actuator device and the like, and a fuel cell using the ion exchange resin.
In recent years, for example, portable electronic equipment such as a portable telephone, a personal computer (PC), or a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) has become remarkably multifunctional, and the portable electronic equipment with a lens module thereby having an image pickup function has become common. In such portable electronic equipment, focusing and zooming are performed by moving a lens in the lens module in an optical axis direction.
In general, a way of moving the lens in the lens module by using a voice coil motor or a stepping motor as a drive section is common. Meanwhile, recently, a unit employing a predetermined actuator device as a drive section has been developed from the viewpoint of miniaturization. As such an actuator device, there is, for example, a polymer actuator device (see, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publications No. 2006-293006 and No. 2006-172635). The polymer actuator device is a device in which, for example, an ion exchange resin film is interposed between a pair of electrodes. In this polymer actuator device, the ion exchange resin film is displaced in a direction orthogonal to a film surface, due to occurrence of a potential difference between the pair of electrodes.